On September 30, the Fifth Circuit stayed the opinion of the U.S. District Court in Texas Alliance for Retired Americans v Hughs, 20-40643. The U.S. District Court had ordered Texas to use the straight-ticket device for the 2020 election, but the Fifth Circuit stayed that order. Therefore, the 2017 bill abolishing the device (starting in 2020) will be the policy. Thanks to Jim Riley for this news. Here is the eight-page order.
On September 24, the Democratic Party asked for a rehearing en banc in the Eleventh Circuit in Jacobson v Lee, 19-14552. This is the lawsuit over the Florida law on the order of candidates on general election ballots. The three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit in this case ruled 2-1 that ballot order lawsuits cannot be filed in federal courts, because they are “political”. This was an absurd conclusion that has no support in the previous fifty years of federal litigation over ballot order.
The Florida law says the all the nominees of the party that won the last gubernatorial election will be listed first on the ballot.
U.S. District Court Judge Wilhelmina Wright will hear Craig v Simon, 0:20cv-2066, on Wednesday, October 7, at 9 a.m. This is the case over whether Minnesota’s law, requiring a postponement of a congressional election until February 2021, violates the 1872 federal law that tells states to hold congressional elections in November of even-numbered years. The state law says if the nominee of a major party dies within 79 days of the general election, the election must be postponed. The Democratic nominee is suing the state to have her election in November.
On September 29, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito asked Pennsylvania Democrats to respond to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. Supreme Court over Pennsylvania’s deadline for postal ballots to be received. The Pennsylvania State Supreme Court had ruled earlier that such ballots need not arrive in election administration offices until Friday, November 6. Then various Pennsylvania Republican leaders asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
The Democratic response is due Monday, October 5.
The Oklahoma November 2020 ballot does not list the names of candidates for presidential elector. This is the first time ever that the Oklahoma ballot has omitted their names.
A recent law gives the State Board of Elections the discretion to remove the names of the electors. The Board decided to remove them this year because there are six presidential candidates on the ballot. With seven presidential elector candidates for each candidate, putting the electors on the ballot would have added 42 names, which takes a fair amount of space.
This year Oklahoma has more presidential candidates on its November ballot than ever before. The previous largest number of presidential candidates was in 1908, when there were five: the nominees of the Democratic, Republican, Socialist, Prohibition, and Independence Parties.
